Emalahleni was going to save R30-million a month when they announced the installation of smart meters back in 2017. But the Emalahleni Local Municipality has not signed an official agreement with Vodacom because after the implementation of the project, they have encountered numerous problems.
Eight thousand old and faulty electricity meters were replaced with the smart meters.
The project was seen as a positive way out as the municipality’s Eskom bill grew by the day.
Councillors listened intensively when Mr Christo Nicholls from Vodacom Business, the enterprise division of Vodacom Group asked two questions in the beginning of his presentation:
ALSO READ
Smart meters not so smart after all
“Are we paying what is due and are we collecting what are due?”
Armed with years and years of knowledge and state of the art technology they proposed installing 40 000 smart meters in eMalahleni.
Globally, utilities have used smart metering to successfully understand electricity usage and supply management. Smart meters facilitate the communication between the utility and the end-user.
This sounded perfect for the sinking ship, however during last week the municipality said Vodacom was only chasing numbers.
The smart meters were not mapped and field meter readers were reading the 8 000 meters. When the figures between the meter readers and the state of the art readings were compared, there were huge differences.
“Due to inconsistent processes by Vodacom, the conventional meter readings will be used going forward,” Mr Kingdom Mabuza, municipal spokesperson said.
By the time going to print there had been no feedback from Vodacom Business.
